US-based author compares Kenyan politics to polygamy

       By ABENEA NDAGO
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Many westerners have written books about Africa’s conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Only two years ago, the Belgian Theodore Trefore’s The Congo Masquerade (2011) attempted a historical analysis of the same conflict.  Yet, what these analyses often lack is a touch of art, which that country personifies. What if people looked at Congo as a failed polygamous marriage, tracing her problems to the historical baggage between Joseph Mobutu’s (Ngbandi tribe), Joseph Kasavubu’s (Bakongo tribe), Patrice Lumumba’s (Batetela tribe), and Moise Tshombe’s (Balunda tribe) peoples?

That is exactly what a Kenyan author based in the US has done. He explores Kenya’s discordant politics through a marital lens. Joseph Alila’s Birthright (2011) may be an anthropological novel, but the reader will not help peeping into our national bedroom through it.  Whoever ascends to power in Kenya ought to instantly become a fair distributor of national wealth to over 40 households in the country’s family yard.

But our state’s biggest weakness is its intentional reluctance to equitably share out resources. The problem is further compounded by feelings of victimhood and entitlement, a direct carry-over from the colonial days. Thus Kenya becomes a complex homestead of marital squabbles over what the author calls ‘birthright.’

Like the first wife Aura, we have a very greedy centre, which does not want to hear the word ‘devolution,’ a word that could probably cure nearly all the diseases that have plagued the country since independence.

The centre is bat-blind to the wise logic that every Kenyan fought for that independence.  And just as the centre deploys the logic of history to achieve its aim, Aura uses the logic of culture and tradition to legitimise her son Juma’s claim to family birthright. According to Luo tradition, a son born to the first house is still the first son (and therefore holds the family birthright) even if he were born twenty years after sons in the other houses. But as happens in Kenya always, what enrages the second wife Atieno is that she was the first to enter Odongo’s house and therefore, chronologically, ought to be the first wife, and her son Okulu the first son. The only impediment is that Odongo had initially been engaged to Aura when the two were still young. Moreover, Odongo’s parents cannot swear that Okulu is their blood-grandson, since Atieno had arrived with him in her belly on the day she walked into her matrimonial hut. Okulu is, therefore, a ‘kimirwa,’ an illegitimate child who is accordingly made impotent by his own paternal grandfather, Ougo, to keep the family bloodline pure. The tragedy of Okulu’s life echoes Ikemefuna’s in Achebe’s Things Fall Apart (1958).  Legitimacy and pedigree are weighty themes in Kenyan politics. The author comes from KwaBwai in Homa Bay County, and the reader detects that Joseph Alila bursts the myth of tribal/clan purity in a way that should help Kenyans to co-exist.

Even though the narrative shifts from Thim Lich in Nyatike Constituency to Bwai in Ndhiwa Constituency, inter-clan interaction is so diverse that it sucks in even the JoKowak Luo in Tanzania’s North Mara District.

There are JoKadem, JoKwabwai, JoSakwa, and JoSuba. The author’s ethnic receptiveness seems to seep from the fact that his own Kwabwai people – like many other clans such as JoSuna of Migori, JoKamagambo of Rongo, and JoGwassi of Suba – are assimilated Luos in the same way that JoSidho, JoWang’aya, JoKamuswa, and JoWasweta of Kano are.

The most important lesson in the novel is the realisation by siblings that only they can come to the rescue of their family. When the hero overcomes his impotence, we see a family coming together to forgive and be forgiven, and religion plays an important role.

Dr Joseph Ramogi Alila was born in 1956 in Ndhiwa (South Nyanza), Kenya. He is a graduate of Binghamton University-SUNY (New York, PhD), Kenyatta University (M.Ed), University of Nairobi (B.Ed), St. Paul’s Amukura High School, Homa Bay High School, and Ratang’a Primary School (Ndhiwa). An organometallic chemist and teacher by training, author Alila has traveled widely where he has penned his novels and poetry. Birthright is Alila’s eleventh novel.